March 27, 2008

Amazon announced Elastic IP Addresses for their Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) service this morning, which removes one of the biggest hurdles for deploying web sites on the service. Previously, customers had no control over the IP addresses assigned to their EC2 instances, a frustrating situation for anyone wanting to reliably point a domain into the cloud.

Elastic IP Addresses solve this issue in a rather elegant way, by assigning a static IP address to your EC2 account, and providing a mechanism for routing that address to any of your EC2 instances. This system provides a reliable address for DNS, and enables failover and takeover features for applications with high availability requirements.

March 22, 2008

I was cleaning my closet today and found a few CDs with photos on them, including this set. I had the pleasure of taking pictures with Juno Reactor 2001, when they came through Portland on their Shango World Tour. Great people, great music, and a hell of a show.

March 13, 2008

It’s cool and rainy today, and we’re at home, enjoying the quiet. The trees in our back yard burst out in leaves while we were at the hospital. I love serendipity.

Driving home was a little surreal — starting in a dim hospital room surrounded by wonderful people, then being injected back into the fast paced world where no one else knows or cares about you. I think I drove a little too slow on the freeway.

We’re headed back to the hospital tomorrow morning to follow up on his bilirubin count. He came out with a big ol’ bruise on his head, and little baby livers sometimes can’t keep up with the clean up work. It’s an easy treatment if it does turn out to be an issue, so we’re not worried — the only long term issues he might have are re-occurring nightmares about pelvises.

Here’s a picture of Mr. Conehead himself. He’s only about 10 minutes old in this picture. His head has returned to a perfectly normal shape since then. Amazing, ‘eh?

March 12, 2008

I’m happy to report that everyone here is quite happy and healthy, and that I’m 100% ridiculously in love with our little dude. It’s like a thunderbolt crashed through our room yesterday morning and completely rearranged our little corner of the universe. I’d gladly sever a couple of my limbs for the guy if he needed it, which is an offer that does not extend to anyone else. It’s weird and irrational and absolutely wonderful.

Some fun facts for the family and other similarly inclined folks:

* He smells good. Seriously. It’s kind of a funny, sweet smell. I can’t get enough of it. I feel like some sort of weird addict — a baby huffer of sorts.

* When he was born, he came out sideways, with a pretty awesome and lopsided cone head. I have pictures. They will be shared. He also has quite the bruise on his head from being positioned funny on the way out. The docs say things will round out and heal up just fine, though.

* He’s very alert, but quiet. He had his first good cry last night, but otherwise he enjoys looking around, snuffling, sighing, and smacking his lips.